Presentation Script: Plurality in Japan

Hello, I am NISHIO Hirokazu. I’m a member of Anno team and the leader of Japanese translation team of the Plurality book. Today, I will talk about “Plurality in Japan.” The purpose of this presentation is to connect Plurality to the Japanese context. It will help Japanese people understand Plurality better and provide international people with new insights.

What is the Plurality Book

• The Future of Collaborative Technology and Democracy

• The book was written by Audrey, Glen, and ⿻Plurality community.

• (The English version released May 20th)

• The Japanese version is in progress and be published within the year.

⿻Plurality community in Japan

• In Plurality-Japanese community,
  • 44 participants communicates in Japanese
  • on a public forum using a Wiki system
  • to build knowledge network asynchronously.
• This book and knowledge network has already had a significant impact on Japanese society…
  • That is…

Broad Listening in the Tokyo Gubernatorial Election

• Broad listening is a concept introduced in this book.
• ANNO Takahiro, a candidate in the election, included broad listening in his manifesto.
• Let me translate the manifesto to English…

It is in the section of democracy.

• High-speed reflection of the will of the people.

• Instead of “broadcast,” we should use “broad listening.”

• What is broadcast? it is

  • One voice for many

• When we tried to listen to everyone’s voices, the recipients became overwhelmed by too much information.
• Technology help us to better collect many voices. That is broad listening.

• Using technology to update not only “outgoing” but also “incoming”

Here is an example

• We collected posts on X (Twitter),

• used the Perspective API to exclude offensive comments,

• got about twelve handreds posts.

• We use an open-source tool “Talk to the City” by AI Objectives Institute to create this visualization.

• There are various opinion clusters.
• The summaries and labels for the clusters are generated by AI.
• This demonstrates how current technology has already made this possible.

Broad Listening

• I love this concept!

• And I think, it is an augmentation of human cognitive abilities.

And It changes social structure

• This illustration was originally created to explain how large language models can transform organizational structures.
• Hierarchy structures emerged because the size of organizations exceeded the cognitive capacity of humans.
  • Since it is impossible to listen to everyone’s voice, we had to create hierarchies where some people listen to others and relay the information.
  • However, if the technology enables us to listen to a large number of voices, leading to a reduction in hierarchical structures.

The keyword “hierarchy” is often mentioned as a characteristic when discussing Japanese organizational culture.

• Erin Meyer’s research shows that Japan is a hierarchical but consensual culture.

  • Members of an organization should follow the organization’s decisions.
  • The leader of the organization should not make decisions alone.

• Japanese culture is different from that of many countries around the world. Mutual understanding of each cultures would be beneficial in building a new society.

  • because: beauty, growth, progress — all result from the union of the unlike.

I want to introduce more aspects of Japanese culture

• They Avoids Confrontation and want Anonymity
• In Japanese culture, Open disagreement is not good. It breaks social harmony.
• Right chart shows anonymous user on Twitter.

  • The majority of Japanese people do not want to express their opinions using their real names.

  • All Japanese speakers at international conferences are outliers of Japanese culture…

• So

  • Leaders of Japanese organization must listen broadly to conflicting anonymous voices.

  • (anonymous Polis-like system will help to encourage deliberation.)

KJ Method also helps those situation

• The KJ Method developed by KAWAKITA Jiro in Japan

• It is a way to make collective wisdom from large amounts of descriptive data

• It is also known as Affinity Diagram
• but there is a major misunderstanding in translating the concept…

Core concept of KJ Method

• KAWAKITA Jiro said,

  • It is completely wrong to move from broad categories to finer ones. We must always proceed from finer categories to broader ones.

  • Simply using existing grouping frameworks in your mind and fit the pieces into these ready-made frameworks completely nullifies the creative power of the KJ Method.

• We must let go of existing frameworks.

• We must break down the boundaries of groups created by preconceptions.

• That is the first step toward correctly understanding world.

related to the concept of boundaries. I would like to introduce the ideas of another Japanese philosopher.

• that is NAMERAKA Society by SUZUKI Ken
• FLAT society is homogeneous, monolithic society, it is not good.
• STEP society is divided by boundaries between multiple groups. There are divisions.
• Instead, it is preferable for these groups to be smoothly connected without clear boundaries.
  • That is NAMERAKA society.
• These diverse groups should not be divided by distinct boundaries, but rather be interconnected in a seamless way.
• This also relates to the concept of boundaries and their dissolution.
• We should not make world homogeneous to resolve division.
• We should make the boundaries smooth.

And again, broad listening. Augmenting human cognitive abilities smoothes boundaries

• because, by expanding the range of what people can observe, it becomes easier to include diverse opinions within that range.
• This helps people understand the Plurality that exists here and now.
• I believe that this is what is needed for us to cooperate beyond divisions.

Summary

• Broad listening is augmentation of human cognitive abilities.

• It decreases the needs of hierarchical structure of organization.

• We must let go of existing frameworks to understand world correctly. We must break down the boundaries of groups created by preconceptions.

• We should not make world homogeneous to resolve division. We should make the boundaries smooth.

• Augmenting human cognitive abilities help to smoothes boundaries, by understanding Plurality.

Thank you for listening to my presentation on Plurality in Japan.

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